Vox.com Embeddable Cardstacks

Role

Front-End Engineer

Designer

Project

A cardstack on Vox.com is a detailed, in-depth explainer that covers a specific topic. The idea behind them is that anyone can look through a cardstack and then have a basic level of understanding of the topic. This content-type is treated as a special entry with a unique experience differing from the rest of the site.

While working on the Vox.com team, I was tasked with leading front-end engineering on how we could best create a way to share our cardstacks beyond our site. We wanted to make them embeddable, while also keeping them lightweight and flexible.

The designer and I worked closely together to flesh out a prototype of the cardstacks using a simple iFrame and the same layout we were currently using. We decided to make several changes for the embeds in order to improve user experience, but instead of creating a separate version of cardstacks, we updated the overall layout of them so that the experience was consistent across any platform.